A knowledge-rich curriculum: the challenges of change

To lay my curricular cards on the table, I believe that the promotion of a knowledge-rich approach to teaching is the best available option to us in order to bring about sustainable positive change.

For me, this means that we should:

•         Write and implement clear, well-organised enacted, which specify and prioritise the teaching of knowledge to a greater degree than is currently typical
•         Ensure that this increased knowledge-base is used meaningfully, to inform and enable domain-specific achievements in critical thinking, reasoning, increasing independence of thought etc

It means that we should broadly avoid:

•         Attempts to build curricula around the development of generic ‘skills’ which transfer across subject domains, such as resilience or creativity
•         Approaches which try to downplay the value of subject content because technology or assumed conditions in ‘the future’ will render knowledge redundant

I believe that the approach brings advantages which include raising attainment and student accomplishment, improving student attitudes to school, enabling subject teams to work more efficiently together, reducing workload, and improving the experience of students vulnerable to underachievement. This conviction has been formed through a combination of working as a teacher, reading, discussion with others and visits to schools other than my own. I am quite sure that it is an over-simplistic and imperfect vision. Equally, it seems ‘good enough’ to promote with authenticity, hope, and a reasonable expectation of success, in the schools  with which I work.

The challenge of the work is of course in the implementation. There are plenty of pretty obvious barriers – time, cost associated with resourcing, the sort of absolutist thinking that implacably associates ‘knowledge’ with ‘oppression’. Here are three further examples which are worth unpicking.

The knowledge-gap within the profession

The bare facts are that the number of individuals actively working in the profession who have genuinely advanced knowledge of successful curriculum and assessment design is fairly low. This is a logical product of the lack of emphasis given to these areas in the profession over the last twenty years or so. This leads to the faintly terrifying prospect of thousands of us suddenly and en masse producing tests, making selections of optimal knowledge, creating resources and designing activities without enough evidence base and guidance to work from. There is some excellent thinking out there of course; sessions I've attended with Daisy Christodoulou, Phil Stock and Christine Counsell have been fantastically helpful - so it's incumbent on leaders to make sure that high quality thinking is present in schools.

The importance of subject autonomy

A risk associated with any rush towards knowledge is that attempts to achieve consistency within schools will not pay enough attention to the distinct ways in which curriculum reform plays out in different subject areas. In English, for example, there is a pressing need for selection of rich and coherent content, which fits together well and provides a narrative through the learning. This is much less the case in Maths, Science, or MFL, for example, where the content is more clearly defined anyway, and so attention is better directed towards other fields: assessment, sequencing, revisiting of prior content etc. If we ignore this and follow a one-size-fits model, with all knowledge organisers being handed to SLT by a week on Wednesday, the implications for reduced pace, impact and staff engagement are considerable.

The issue of enrolment

The overriding issue at play though, is that many teachers and leaders simply don’t agree with the vision for knowledge-rich teaching which I’ve conveyed so blithely and with such apparent confidence at the start of this blog. The evidence of this can be seen perhaps most acutely in the social media debates, but also in the national press, in politics, and is never far from the surface in many a casual conversation about education.

Why might it be that the change to knowledge-richer teaching is so contentious? For those in support of the project, it can appear maddening – the logic and evidence-base in favour seems so clear and convincing – of course students need knowledge to think! Of course knowledge of the world around them enables young people to negotiate their own positions and beliefs more deeply! Of course you need knowledge to be meaningfully creative! Katharine Birblasingh recently encapsulated this in an exasperated tweet, culminating in: ‘Why don’t people get this!’.

Some argue that enrolment matters more than anything else. Leaders can attempt to ‘lever change’ through monitoring the creation of as many knowledge organisers and low stakes tests as they like; if the teacher on the ground isn’t authentically enrolled in the project, it will fall flat. Worse, a knowledge-rich curriculum in the hands of a teacher who doesn’t agree with it may well lead directly to the very ‘rote-learning, fact-regurgitating, mindless chanting, joyless experience’ about which so many are so concerned. So what do we do about that?

History provides insight. I was recently taken through a case study from the US Navy at the end of the 19^th Century, which seemed to carry parallels to where we find ourselves in education. In very condensed form, ships at that time had fairly heavy-duty guns on board, but they were fixed rigidly to the deck. Therefore, the capacity of the gunners to actually hit enemy craft was massively hindered by the pitch and roll of the ship. Many rounds were fired in battle; very few actually hit home and did any actual ‘good’ (a bit like lessons dedicated to personal learning and thinking skills, one could argue).

However, a solution was found by a relatively junior naval lieutenant, William S Sims. Sims created a firing system which took account of the roll of the ship and kept the gun on a relatively level plane. As a result, the accuracy of fire increased by a reported – get this – 6000%. What happened next? Sims communicated his invention and data to the naval powers in Washington and, despite the overwhelmingly convincing rationale and evidence provided, he was completely ignored. Outraged by what he saw as a negligent disregard for change, he continued to promote his approach, this time using more inflamed rhetoric. This led to a vitriolic response from the naval establishment; in Men, Machines and Modern Times (1966), Elting Morison describes Sims being ‘told that there were others quite as sincere and loyal as he and far less difficult; he was dismissed as a crackbrained egotist; he was called a deliberate falsifier of evidence.’. Eventually, Sims wrote directly to Roosevelt, was put in charge of a training academy, and became widely known as 'the man who taught us to shoot'.

Morison goes on to ask the question as to why the process took so long, and was so difficult:

'Why this deeply rooted, aggressive, persistent hostility from Washington that was only broken up by the interference from Theodore Roosevelt? Here was a reform that greatly and demonstrably increased the fighting effectiveness of a service that maintains itself almost exclusively to fight. When then this refusal to accept so carefully documented a case, a case proved incontestably by records and experience?'

 In an entirely partial way, I would suggest that there are shades here of the level of vitriol evident in some of the debate about curriculum, from both sides of the debate. The rhetoric stemming from those committed to skills-focused approaches can sometimes seem bafflingly angry, hostile, and dismissive of what appears to be strong rationale and evidence. For those convinced of the knowledge-rich approach, a level of outrage similar to Sims’ is equally apparent – how is it justifiable that such a strong evidence can be ignored, side-lined or denied? Isn’t this simply morally and intellectually wrong?

Morison offers the following reasons for Sims’ predicament, each of which I will follow with a speculative link to the state of education as we find it.

Firstly, he suggests that the source of the innovation was problematic; why should naval commanders pay attention to a relatively junior upstart officer? This situation is somewhat reversed for us – if anything, the knowledge-rich agenda is understood as being imposed from above, and has suffered from being associated with the political right. The ultimate symbol of this is of course Michael Gove. Personally, I find it deeply frustrating that Gove still receives the number of references and level of attention he gets; so often, exploration of the possible merits of a knowledge curriculum is dismissed as ‘gGveite’ – at least, when it isn’t being described as ‘Gradgrindian’ instead.

 For me, this obsessive attention serves only to weaken the debate – it inspires the sort of  pantomime-ish sneering that we see at PMQs in parliament, and we need to be better than that. Contemporary, meaningful debate about the curriculum should invoke critique of the ideas propounded by Willingham, Hirsch, Christoudoulou, Counsell; macho braying about Gove does no good at all. Surely the time has come to, ahem ‘get gover it’.

Secondly, Morison points to the fact that Sims was criticising and providing alternatives to approaches which had been put in place by those who were still in power. This raises questions about the problems of those in positions of authority being willing or able to change their mind. On the surface, this sounds easy, but it carries associated implications that previous ideas and approaches that were led with such vigour and authenticity were, in fact, flawed (and yes I realise that this applies as much to advocates of knowledge-rich approaches as opponents). How easy is it for those relatively advanced in their careers to respond to new evidence or ways of thinking, and actively deny approaches that they have previously espoused? Not very, I would suggest.

Mary Bousted, joint general secretary of the NEU, is a possible example. Bousted has been involved in debates about skills vs knowledge approaches, the details of which are less of interest here than the knowledge of her historic commitment to skills-focused approaches. In the introduction to the 2007 ATL publication ‘Subject to Change: New Thinking on the Curriculum, she wrote:

'Why are we radical? Because we believe that things are so broke they cannot be fixed by half measures. We need to do things differently, and to do better, if we are to prepare young people for a world in which what is known to be true changes by the hour; a world in which access to information is at the touch of a keyboard, where rote learning of facts must give way to nurturing through education of essential transferable skills that enable the next generation to navigate the information age.

 That is why we advocate a skills-based curriculum. One that is focused on communication, physical, interpersonal and intrapersonal skills and thinking and learning skills; all essential components of the educated person able to think and act effectively in the twenty-first century.'

My intention is not to engage with these ideas in detail here, beyond saying that I don’t agree with them, and feel that they led to a period I look back on with some sadness. Having trained in 1999, I feel that my generation of teachers was send down an untested blind alley; had we been guided more sensibly, the experience of teachers and young people at this time could have been so much better than it was.

I am making no criticism of Mary Bousted herself I should add – she may change her mind every five minutes for all I know. Equally, she may still be absolutely committed to the idea of ‘essential transferable skills’ being a primary purpose of schooling – I am attempting no comment on her views. The salient point through this example is to ask how much of the rejection of knowledge-rich curricula is due to the difficulties of those in authority to change their minds or respond to new evidence.

The lesson from Morison, is that those in positions of institutional power, who have worked in particular ways for long periods and promoted particular approaches, may find it harder than others to change course. Is this the case in education? It’s hard to see why it wouldn’t be. What can be done about it? How do we promote a greater sense for all of genuine humility, a commitment to following evidence rather than ideology? Is the greater plurality of voices available through social media helping or hindering this process?

A final perspective offered through the Sims’ example is more profound. Morison suggests the following:

‘A less obvious cause appears by far the most important one. It has to do with the fact that the Navy [or any service] is not only an armed force; it is a society. Men spend their whole lives in it and tend to find the definition of their whole being within it…The opposition, where it occurs, of the soldier and the sailor to such change springs from the normal human instinct to protect oneself, and more especially, one’s way of life.’

Once again, links to education are not difficult to see. Teachers typically care about their jobs, and the likelihood is that their professional and personal identities may be closely intertwined. Anyone who trained during the 60s, through to today, has been part of a society which has valued particular practices and ways of thinking, some of which do not appear naturally aligned with those of a knowledge-rich curriculum: experiences over long term retention of knowledge, student-centred rather than teacher-led, creativity of the individual over the common acquisition of pre-specified knowledge.

This reality – the dissonance and disruption created by new ideas which conflict with existing ideologies – may be at the root of both resistance to change, and also explain the level of emotion and hostility which are created. What should leaders do to ease the process, and ensure that any attempt to bring in change achieves its aims whilst ensuring that staff are well-cared for? That’s probably for another blog – but knowing ourselves and the ways in which that the society of education has developed, standing firm with our principles whilst being willing to hold our opinions loosely and change our minds, are probably good starting points.

More than anything, anyone attempting to introduce a knowledge-curriculum should know that change isn’t easy for the people who are asked to do it. This is a major change, requiring lots of thought, lots of communication, and real sensitivity to the reality of what this feels like for the teachers and leaders on the ground. For me, it's the right thing to do - and I hope that if I'm proved wrong, I'll be able to write a blog in 10 years time about how skills is the way to go; time will tell.